Mamás con Más

Mamás con Más, a partnership of Santa Cruz Community Ventures and UCSC’s Blum Center, explores Latinx mothers’ experiences with mainstream and alternative financial services in Santa Cruz County. When families have urgent, unmet financial needs, they may turn to alternative lenders for short-term loans and other services, however, high fees and exorbitant interest rates can make repayment difficult. To learn more about these issues in our own community, we facilitated listening circles with low-income Latinx mothers living in Watsonville and surrounding areas about their financial service use. We also constructed a GIS map to document the location and concentration of mainstream and alternative financial services in Watsonville and Santa Cruz. Please join us to learn more about our findings and discuss how we can build more inclusive financial services and programs.